Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

I. There is a certain necessity which destroys freedom. It is called antecedent, namely, that which anticipates the exercise of freedom and does not include it, as consequent necessity does. If we wish to speak truly, it is the same thing to say: that the will is pressed in acting by antecedent necessity, and that the will is destitute of elective power. But lest we insert useless questions here, we say that we accept antecedent necessity in the sense in which it is commonly wont to be accepted by philosophers and is accepted by the heretics themselves, namely, as excluding the freedom of indifference.

II. Now, the Calvinist doctrine is set forth in this way by Scharpius, a Calvinist man, De Lib. arb. Bk. II ch. 3: «The state of the third controversy between us and the Pontificians is this: whether man after the fall (before the fall Calvin conceded freedom in the true sense of the word) is truly of free will in those things which pertain to piety, and although he can do nothing without the help of grace, nevertheless, aroused by prevenient grace and aided by God, he can so work that he can also not work. The affirmative part is defended by Bellarminus and the Council of Trent, Sess. VI. But we say... that in man after the fall God acts so efficaciously and bends the will, that man's will cannot not follow God willing and working the conversion of man; although it follows not compelled, but spontaneously.And the Synod of Dordrecht of the Calvinist faction says: art. 3: «we affirm that God moves the will of man by his grace, not, as the Pontificians hand down, so that it may afterwards be of our election to obey or resist the motion; but so that he bends it efficaciously and necessarily to obedience.» But this is the necessity which we call antecedent. Calvin himself in Bk. II against Pighius n. 24: «If freedom is opposed to coercion, I confess that the will is free.... We remove coercion and violence... but we deny that it is free, because on account of the innate depravity of man, it is necessarily borne toward evil and cannot desire anything but evil.»And Bk. VI n. 19: «For this is not the question: whether the will acts, which is beyond doubt, but whether it acts from itself... for who does not know that it comes about through the will that man wills? But Paul there (Philip. II, 13) asserts that the will is governed by the Spirit of God so that it may incline and aspire to good, and therefore that it is his (God's) own action, if we conceive anything good in the mind.» And lib. VI n. 4: «I deny that grace is so offered to us that it may afterwards be of our option either to obey or to resist. I deny that it is given only in this, that it may aid our weakness with its support, as if anything else were situated in us; but I confirm that this is wholly his work, that our heart be turned from stone to flesh.» Wherefore, since it was agreed between him and the Catholics that whatever of good is in us is to be attributed to God, he noted that the question was about the mode: Lib. VI n. 1: «but when we begin to express the mode in which God is in us the author of all good things; here he (Pighius) immediately resists; because he will not endure that it be attributed to God otherwise than in such a way that a part be left to man,» namely, the free motion of the will from itself. Hence in the Antidote against chapter 6 of Sess. VI he says: «I say openly that what the Tridentine Fathers pronounce here conflicts with that saying of Christ: whoever has heard from my Father comes to me. For as Augustine prudently notes, it follows that no one hears and learns from God without at the same time believing in Christ, and that the motion of the Holy Spirit is so efficacious that it always generates faith. But they place this in man's option, that he hearken to the inspiration of God, if he will. These things can in no way be reconciled with one another: that all who have learned from God believe in Christ, and that the inspiration of God avails no otherwise nor is ratified, unless men assent from themselves.»Calvin further declares what necessity he constructs, namely, that of the consequence, not of the consequent. In Instit. Lib. I ch. 16: «What God has decreed must so come to pass, that nevertheless it is neither precisely nor by its own nature necessary. A familiar example occurs in the bones of Christ. Since he put on a body like ours, no sane man will deny that his bones were fragile; which nevertheless could not be broken. Whence we again see that the distinctions about necessity secundum quid and absolute, and likewise of the consequent and of the consequence, were not idly invented in the schools.» Namely, the act of the will under grace is contingent in itself; because it could not be, for God could have not determined it; accordingly the consequent is contingent: but with the motion of grace posited, that act cannot not be; whence the necessity of the consequence is had. Luther asserted the same doctrine.Cf. among his Articles the 36th.

III. That this opinion is heretical we prove briefly, for there is no need of more words in a matter so manifest. First, it was reprobated by the Conc. Trid. Sess. VI en. 4, about which we shall say something later. It was condemned also by the proscription of the Jansenist proposition: for meriting or demeriting in the state of fallen nature there is not required freedom from necessity, but freedom from coercion suffices. For we merit when we work with the help of grace. Under grace, therefore, there exists freedom from necessity, or the will is immune from antecedent necessity, so that it can act and not act, when it has been aroused by grace to act.

IV. Moreover, Scripture and the whole Tradition openly oppose this most pestilent error. Truly 1) the works which are done through grace in the present state are so exhibited by Scripture, that by the law enacted they are commanded to fallen men, who are prevented by the grace of God and aroused to act; reward and prize are set before the same men when they do them; by the threat of punishment those men are deterred from the omission of those same works; then persuasions and exhortations are applied to men for acting holily: but all these things would be absurd, if a man acting with the help of grace were determined to good by antecedent necessity; therefore. The major is established from the repeated laws, precepts, exhortations, counsels, which occur most frequently in both Testaments, to which their sanction of reward or punishment is attached. Again, those laws, exhortations, persuasions regard men aided by the help of grace for working well. For the discourse is about salutary works, by which the friendship of God is obtained or increased, by which we are made worthy of attaining eternal glory: but it is established from the same Scripture that these things cannot be done without the grace of God. Therefore. But the minor is evident from the very light of reason. Therefore.

2. Scripture asserts to the will of fallen man, with regard to the works of piety by which he may please God, the faculty of choosing. Deuter. XXX, 19: I call heaven and earth to witness (says Moses to the people) today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose therefore life, that you may live, you and your seed, and may love the Lord your God and obey his voice." Cf. also Iosue XXIV, 15. 22. Eccli. XV, 14 ff. God from the beginning constituted man and left him in the hand of his own counsel; he added his commandments and his precepts: if you will keep the commandments (these words are directed by the inspired writer to present men, fallen men) they shall preserve you... He has set before you water and fire; stretch forth your hand to whichever you will: before man are life and death, good and evil: that which shall please him shall be given him. Wherefore Scripture testifies that an indifferent power of doing and not doing inheres in the will. Eccli. XXXI, 8—10: Blessed is the rich man who is found without blemish... who could transgress and has not transgressed, could do evil and has not done it:" and therefore that man does good because he wills, and does not do it because he does not will; as in the cited place Eccli. XV and Isaiae I, 16. 20: Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your thoughts from my eyes... If you are willing and will hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and provoke me to wrath, the sword shall devour you. Matth. XIX, 17: If you will enter into life, keep the commandments. But free will cannot be represented more clearly and evidently. Since, therefore, it is represented as free with respect to those works which are done with the help of the grace of God, it is clear that the free will is free under the grace of God.

3. Scripture testifies that the will of fallen man resists, or can resist, the grace of God or God calling and arousing. Apocalyp. III, 20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door to me, I will enter to him. Prov. I, 24: I called and you refused; I stretched out my hand and there was none who would look. Actuum VII, 51: Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Isaiae V, 3. 4: Judge between me and my vineyard. What is it that I ought to have done more to my vineyard and did not do to it? or what did I expect, that it should make grapes, and it made wild grapes? Matth. XXIII, 37: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Rom. II, 4: Do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and longanimity? do you not know that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But man could not resist, if grace brought upon the will a necessity of acting: therefore.

But it is evident that in these testimonies the discourse is about the free will of fallen man: and therefore that the exception is vain and absurd, namely, that the discourse there is about the unimpaired free will.

V. As regards the Fathers, it is generally manifest that they taught and defended against the heretics the active indifference of the will with respect to salutary works in fallen men. Nor is there need here to heap up more testimonies. Let those be compared which we gave in Thesis LXX, De Deo Creante. See Maffei, Istoria Theologica, Libb. IV. V. VI. But what avails most of all here is that we have Calvin himself consenting in this matter, who concedes that his doctrine is new and unknown to the ancients: «Christ moves the will (he says, Instit. L. II. c. 3), not in the way handed down and believed for many ages past, that it may afterwards be of our election either to obey or to resist the motion, but by affecting it efficaciously.»

VI. Specifically, in the Pelagian controversy the same thing was vindicated. Thus Peter the Deacon in the letter sent to the African Bishops exiled in Sardinia, ch. IV, n. 3: «The heavenly Father reveals (the faith) to whom he wills, drawing him to true freedom, not by violent necessity, but by infusing sweetness through the Holy Spirit, so that presently believing we may say that the Lord is Jesus: which no one can say through the natural freedom of the will, unless in the Holy Spirit.» And the same African Bishops in the letter to Ioannes, Venerius, etc., ch. 10: «But what you say, that man is saved by the mercy of God alone, but they say: unless someone shall have concurred and labored with his own will, he cannot be saved, both is worthily maintained, if the right order of divine mercy and human will be preserved, that the former may precede, the latter follow; let the mercy of God alone confer the beginning of salvation, to which then the will of man may be present as the co-worker of its own salvation: so that the prevenient mercy of God may direct the course of the human will, and the obedient human will, with the same mercy assisting, may run according to the intention to the prize.» And ch. 12: «And through this, since man has free will, he hears the precepts which he may do, but for fulfilling the divine precepts the free will is in no way made suitable, unless it be divinely aided.» Prosper in Responsionibus ad Capitula Gallorum, respons. 6: «It is wrongly said that free will is nothing or does not exist; but that before the illumination of faith it acts in darkness and in the shadow of death is not rightly denied.»

Man, therefore, being justified, with no preceding good merit, receives the gift, by which gift he may acquire also merit, so that what has been begun in him through the grace of Christ may be increased also through the industry of the free will, the help of God never being removed. But that the predestination of God, whether to good or to evil, operates in men, is most ineptly said, so that some necessity seems to impel man to both.»

VII. But as regards Augustine, we bring the matter to a close with these arguments. Augustine, even after the Pelagian heresy had arisen, defended against the same Pelagians both the necessity of grace and free will. The witness, above all others, is the book written De Gratia et libero arbitrio. Moreover, these two things are certain: 1) that he himself, with regard to the definition or essence of free will, inasmuch as in fallen men it is capable of merit and demerit, agreed wholly with the Pelagians: we proved this in the cited Thesis, n. VI; but the Pelagians vindicated for the will the active indifference of doing and not doing. 2) It is established that Augustine agreed with the Massilians with regard to the nature and efficacy of grace; this we demonstrated in Th. XXXVIII.: but the Massilians asserted a grace to which the human will could resist and consent, as Tansenius himself testifies. But this doctrine of Augustine is wholly opposed to the doctrine which we impugn in this thesis. Therefore. But let it suffice to bring forth one most eloquent testimony from the book de Spiritu et litt., ch. 34: «Let him attend and see that this (good) will is to be attributed to the divine gift not only because it is from free will, which has been naturally created in us, but also because God acts by the persuasions of things seen, that we may will and that we may believe, whether extrinsically through the evangelical exhortations… or intrinsically, where no one has in his power what comes into his mind: but to consent or to dissent is of the proper will. When, therefore, God acts with the rational soul in these ways, that it may believe him (for it cannot believe anything by free will, if there be no persuasion or calling which it may believe), certainly God works in man even the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy prevents us; but to consent to the calling of God or to dissent from it, as I have said, is of the proper will. Which thing not only does not weaken what was said: «what have you that you have not received?» but even confirms it. For the soul cannot receive and have the gifts, about which it hears this, unless by consenting; and through this, what it has and what it receives is of God; but to receive and to have is certainly of the receiver and the haver. Now if anyone constrains us to scrutinize that depth, why to one it is so persuaded that he is persuaded, but to another not so; only two things occur for the present, which it pleases me to answer: «O the depth of the riches! Is there iniquity with God?» Let him to whom this answer displeases seek more learned men, but let him beware lest he find more presumptuous ones.» Here you have the economy of freedom and grace most clearly set forth. Cf. Petavius, De Opificio sex dierum, L. IV.

VIII. And in very truth, if the history of dogmas be weighed, it will be clear that the magisterium of the Church was no less solicitous to defend the necessity and gratuitousness of grace, than to assert the power of the free will, aided by grace, of choosing between good and evil and of determining itself to either at pleasure. Just as the Pelagian heresy was proscribed, so also among the ancients the Manichaeans were proscribed, the mathematicians or astrologers, assertors of fate, were proscribed, and among the moderns Wikleffus was proscribed (art. 27), Lutherus was proscribed (art. 36), Lutherus and Calvinus were proscribed (Conc. Trid. Sess. VI cann. 45), all of whom denied free will.

IX. And as regards canon 5 Conc. Trid. Sess. VI can. 5. of Sess. VI of the Synod of Trent, note that by it he is condemned who has said that the free will, moved and aroused by God, cooperates in nothing by assenting to God, who arouses and calls, and cannot dissent, if it will, but like some inanimate thing does nothing at all, but conducts itself merely passively. Now, however, the question can be raised what the Synod understood by the last words. Whether to condemn those who would say that the will does nothing at all, and therefore to establish only that the will does something under grace, so that satisfaction be made to the definition of the Council, if it be said that the will acts only spontaneously under grace? For the will acting spontaneously does not conduct itself as some inanimate thing doing nothing at all. It must be answered, however, that both from the scope of this definition and from the context of the Canon this exclusive sense is excluded. For first, the scope of the Council was to proscribe the error of the Protestants about free will: but Lutherus, Calvinus and the rest did not deny these spontaneous motions of the will under grace; therefore the condemnation would have pertained to them in nothing. But they denied motions free and immune from necessity; these, therefore, the Tridentine Fathers wished to vindicate. Again, these last words ought to cohere with the preceding ones: but in the preceding ones it is asserted that man so cooperates with God by assenting, that he can dissent if he will, which words are to be taken in the composite sense with grace. For if this be lacking, there can be no consent, no act; but there cannot be dissent, for when we dissent, we dissent from someone, i. e., here, from God calling through grace. Nor likewise can that grace be cast away, as is said ch. 5; for what would you cast away that you do not have? (whence, as we may hint this in passing, the fraud or inadvertence of those is clear, who take the words of Trent: he can dissent, as synonymous with these: he can not act). By these words, to some, immunity from necessity is taught: therefore, by the following words, the mere spontaneous activity of the will cannot be established as sufficient. And truly, for the Tridentine Fathers, it was the same thing for the will or man to act and to act freely; they looked, namely, at the acts which are called human, by which we are properly said to act. Whence in chapter 5, to which that canon corresponds, the Fathers had denied that man does nothing at all in receiving the inspiration of God, since he can even cast it away. Surely he acts for this reason; because he so receives it that he can not receive it, certainly he would not act if he could not do that. But this is the human action, of which we are masters; therefore.

X. To the argument taken from authority let there be added also the reason drawn from the nature of actual grace. For actual grace consists, as we have said, in the elevation of the faculty and in vital acts. Now the elevation of the faculty brings about only this, that the will can operate in a higher order, not that it lacks the power essential to itself. But the vital acts, in which the prevenient illumination and inspiration are placed, are either indeliberate, or also deliberate. If deliberate, whatever follows from them will have its ground in the free exercise of the will determining itself, and therefore will be immune from antecedent necessity. But through indeliberate acts, to which purely prevenient grace looks, the will is indeed affected to something; but the power remains to the will of choosing one of those things to which it is inclined through the indeliberate motions, which therefore exist in the will so that the exercise of freedom may be possible: therefore. Cf. Th. XVII.

Furthermore, in order that we may convince the adversaries from some of their own principles: they concede, indeed contend, that grace imposed no necessity upon the Angels and upon the first man in the state of innocence: but if the first man, whole, did not suffer necessity from the grace conferred upon him, neither ought fallen man to suffer necessity from the grace which is now conferred upon him. For the grace of fallen man is healing, medicinal grace, i. e., restoring man to that perfection with respect to meritorious acts from which he fell; but it would not really be healing grace, if a man aided by grace could not move himself as before, but could only be moved; just as that is not called medicine which, applied to an infirm foot to heal it, does not bring about that it can move by itself, as before the infirmity, but only that it can be moved by another. Therefore if the freedom of indifference was lost through the loss of grace, with grace restored and that grace healing the will, that freedom will have to be restored: and therefore the will of fallen man, too, will be free under grace.